DHCP has nothing to do with routing.
Although some routers don’t honor this.
Will a mini PC do gigabit routing for under $200?
I have a mesh setup for my wifi.
My ISP modem/router and the integrated router in the mesh system do not provide the features I need.
Well that’s odd. I have a FritzBox 7490, set the DHCP range from 100-200, and my Google devices (Chromecasts, Speakers) all get a static IP assigned via DHCP (outside of the range, in the 70s), and the have no problems connecting to the web and resolving hostnames. So they certainly also receive the required gateway and DNS server. 
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It depends on what the mini pc is made off but generally speaking, yes. Routing does not take a whole lot of CPU computation, it is all the other firewall features which do: Ads filtering, anti virus, deep packet inspection (DPI)… etc
I saw this statement from you several times in this thread. I cannot agree with that.
In Unifi EdgeRouter I have dhcp range set between .10 and .50, and at the same time fixed addreses set in this dhcp valueas from outside the range, for example .2, .3, 100, .150.
Maybe it depends on device software. But I see no reason to correlate between dhcp dynamic range and dhcp fixed leases
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That’s really weird Daniel. I’ve always used the ip reserved in DHCP with no issues even. Never even considered doing it any differently. Good to know it works as you configure it.
Again, you are confusing a static/permanent IP address set in the router with a static/fixed IP determined by the device.
If you set the static IP address in the device, it must be outside of the DHCP reserved range because the DHCP server does not know the device exists or that the IP is in use.There is a very real possibility that the DHCP server could assign the IP to a new device creating a conflict. A conflict that is rather hard to diagnose.
If you set the IP address as static/fixed (different routers use different terminology) in the router, the device MAC address is remembered by the router and that MAC address will always get the same static IP address.
I used to believe that assigning the device IP address in the device simplified my network management. Until a DHCP assignment resulted in two devices on my net with the same IP. Now, I let the router manage the IP addresses for everything on my LAN. It is so much easier.
Here’s my IP distribution list. Managing this without DHCP would quickly become a nightmare:
No I am not.
Well duh!
I don’t think any of this is helping the op.
I think that we are saying the same thing.
Well I’m not going to muddy the waters any further, lol. I applied the best of the advice I was given here and it appears to work. I reserved the previously DHCP assigned addresses in my router with the same addresses the router had assigned them, not for want of ignoring best practice, but only because that was the point in this thread I had gotten up to so far. I hadn’t had time yet to apply, or consider any of the other advice. I scanned for the least congested channel on my 2.4 GHz network and switched to that and I reduced the bandwidth of both my 2.4 and 5GHz networks to 20MHz.
And so far, despite the conflicting views here, things appear to be stable. If I have further problems, I’ll try moving my things out of the DCHP range and see if that helps. If that doesn’t help, I’ll probably build my own mini-pc based router - given that this is the only way to know for sure I won’t be buying a dog, lol.
I am no expert (evidently), but it seems you guys are almost in agreement. I think this thread has gone well beyond my original intention for it though, although I have learned some very useful and interesting things from it. So thanks guys.
The main point is you can lock a device to an ip address. Still make sure you have enough reservation space for all your devices else you can run out of up addresses which causes issues.
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Bottom line your issue has to due with an insufficient router/configuration.
I know you said you bought 3 different ones this year and don’t want a “buy x” advice … but if it needs a reboot every 24 hours to handle 30-40 devices then the harsh truth is that the routers you are buying must be low end/not that good.
As others have stated you need to set static IPs and/or fixed DHCP leases.
Static IP = you set at the individual device what you want the IP to be (whether it is a pi, or wifi plug etc.
Fixed DHCP lease = you tell the router what you want that device to be whenever it connects (it does this by looking at MAC address.
Unfortunately, there is two big categories of IoT devices. There is “masses friendly” products that are “push button on app” setup, then there is the “geek friendly” products that require a little more setup but offer massive more configuration settings (sonoff/shelly devices flashed to tasmota would be a great example).
I have noticed on several ASUS and Netgear brand routers that if you set 20+ DHCP leases then it starts to max out the nvram and cause problems.
Thus on any device that you can you should set a static IP at the device, and then use the fixed DHCP lease function for devices that cant (like google home’s or many other IoT products.
If your router has a Fixed DHCP lease function (or can easily be flashed to DD-WRT/Tomato so that it does) then you can try to use current equipment.
If your router does not have that functionality then you need to get the right tool for the job instead of trying to force a square peg into a round hole (and complaining about the hammer). If so, then my advice is to either get a medium end ASUS router (the AX3000 is the best price/performace), or an edgerouter + ubiquiti APs (the asus is more user friendly, but having multiple APs to disperse the load will offer better performance).
Noted. Although much of this has been covered in this thread already. Now at 4 days+ without requiring a router reboot. Something of a new record. I don’t think my routers were poor. 2 ISP supplied and one TP-LINK that cost over £160.
I think it’s down to me having insufficient knowledge for a medium scale IOT home configuration and how this is different from the requirement of a ‘normal’ home router configuration. Much more like running a small business network than a typical home of 2 or 3 years ago.
I think you may have had two (or more) devices fighting over an IP address. What you’ve done soundslike it’s done the trick 
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Not reasonable to expect DHCP to assign a reserved address outside of its range. However a device with a device with an address outside the DHCP range but in the defined network (ip and netmask) will communicate with other devices on the subnet and route out to the WAN with no problem.
It’s all semantics really.
I realize we are going off topic, but the guide doesn’t show throughput.
I think you are playing with fire commenting on this topic, lol. But guys, although as I said I am no expert, as far as I can work out you don’t even really disagree with each other. So that’s that. Happy new year!
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sorry I probably should have pointed you to https://docs.opnsense.org/manual/hardware.html#throughput
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